


Bodies at Rest

by FortySevens



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: AU, Because He's Thinking Heavy Thoughts, Cuddling, F/M, Forever Here For Caitlin and Marcos' BroTP, Gen, John Doesn't Do Much In This Fic But Drive, Let Lorna Sass At Everyone 2kForever, Rating Primarily For Language and References To The Holes In Reed's Leg, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Author Takes Her Feelings Out On Lorna's Flawless Prison Makeup, Timestamp, post 1x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 14:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12509880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: They can’t keep the car and they can’t drive straight back to HQ.After Lorna and Reed escape the Sentinel Services transport to a hell where they won't even call her Polaris, Lorna, Marcos, John and the Struckers steal a minivan and take the long way back to HQ. There's some care-taking, some reuniting, and a whole ton of sass.





	Bodies at Rest

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you wondering why the hell I'm diving into a new fandom when I haven't updated [ Just Fake It (And No One Will Know You’re In Over Your Head)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3400679) in two years, but I'm actually in the process of re-editing it and writing new chapters, so more to come on that soon. Promise. Sorry for being one of those authors the fandom hates for accidentally abandoning her fic. Life happened.
> 
> As for this, well, I came to The Gifted for all the Amy Acker of it, and stayed for the Emma Dumont. Give me an hour of Polaris sassing at people and cuddling with Marcos (also, can we talk about the shower scene from 1x02? Please and thanks). So, here's a 3,000-ish word AU that takes place immediately after the end of 1x04, because this baby fandom is 15 fics and some lint, and if no one's writing fic yet, I might as well do it myself. 
> 
> Enjoy! 
> 
> Prompt of the fic from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/writing-tips/writing-prompts/)
> 
> Number 129: “Right now, I don’t know if I want to kiss you or shove you off a bridge.” 
> 
> “Can I pick?”

They can’t keep the car and they can’t drive straight back to HQ. 

Sure, Sentinel Services isn’t riding their ass right now—likely regrouping, and they’re going to have to be ready to handle one pissed off Agent Turner (what is his deal, _really_?) trying to come down on them—but no matter how nice the car is, they can’t afford to take any chances by doing something so incredibly stupid like bringing it back to base. 

It’s too nice for them, anyway.

Their driver has no business at the wheel since she’s halfway to tears and spends way more time than Lorna is comfortable with looking at Mr. Prosecutor like he’s the second coming of Jesus Christ and peppering him with questions about his bleeding knee, one hand on the steering wheel and the other wrapped around his hand over the center console like a husband and wife taking a Sunday drive through the country. But she somehow manages to get them to an out of the way park-n-ride lot a few miles away from the abandoned warehouses without crashing, so bonus points for her resiliency, or whatever it is that gets them there without making a scene. 

Lorna and Marcos strip the car of anything that could be of use to them, including an extra tank of gas they found in the trunk, an emergency kit that Mr. Prosecutor’s lady friend immediately co-opts, and some comm. tech that may or may not be of use to them, but either way will serve as scrap for Marcos’ next art project (“Training,” he always insists when she finds him in the vault late at night, hands glowing around yet another dilapidated safe-deposit box. “Training my ass,” Lorna cackles like she does every time, before she grabs his warm hands and drags him back to bed to test the limits of John’s ever-present tracking abilities, sorry not sorry.), and even a couple energy bars that were stashed in the glove compartment, while John digs through the engine block for any trackers and crushes the ones he finds into glittery, metallic sand.

The minivan they settle on stealing looks to about a decade old and doesn’t have the gas mileage of Sentinel Services’ fancy hybrid SUV, but it does have a cracked window and a thick layer of dust and tree pollen covering the windshield and roof, so its owner probably isn’t going to come looking for it anytime soon. They probably aren’t going to miss it, either.

So, they’re doing them a favor.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

Marcos—who hasn’t let go of her hand since she broke herself and Mr. Prosecutor out of the prison transport, not that she’s bothered to let him go either—helps her into the back row so Strucker and she-who-must-be-the-Missus, if that ring on her finger is any indication, can take advantage of the extra room between the captain’s chairs in the middle row and get a better look at the holes Lorna ripped into his leg.

She can’t say she feels bad about it.

After all, he did offer.

Lorna barely has a chance to settle in when Marcos climbs into the back and nudges her over, sprawls out to one side and gently tugs at her wrist until she relents with a smile and curls up on his lap, her legs stretched out on the bench seat. He shifts their bodies so he can slide his longer legs between the captain’s chairs, the blood dripping from Strucker’s leg landing on his jeans. It’s a million times more comfortable—and smells better—than the concrete bench she’d been trying to sleep on the last week, so she’ll take it. 

Bonus points for not having to crane her neck around that damn collar anymore.

It takes a couple seconds for John to mess with the steering column enough to get at the wires he needs to split, but he does and pulls out of the parking lot with the ease of someone who definitely _did not steal this embarrassment on four wheels, no sir_.

They’re on the road when Marcos slides his fingers into her hair, easing through the tangles because she didn’t exactly have time to accumulate the prison clout that would translate to buying a hairbrush from the commissary, or whatever it is they did in the three episodes he convinced her to sit through of _Orange Is The New Black_ when they were streaming it from a new recruit’s Netflix account on a computer with a secured VPN. It was the talk of HQ before the girl’s parents got wise and canceled the credit card attached to the account.

Lorna can’t remember where that girl landed once they got her out of the States, and there’s a pang in her chest for the half a second she spends dwelling on hoping that she’s still safe, running around with rainbows on her fingers and butterflies flocking around her head wherever she went. But Marcos’ hand is hot against her scalp and it draws her from her musings until the only thing left in her mind is a happy buzz of _calm_ and _home_ and _safe_. His thumb rubs warm, careful circles against the base of her skull, and really, all of him is warm right now, so he must have been exerting the hell out of his powers to try to get to her.

But she has too. Her eyes slide shut as she relishes in the feel of her powers tingling under her skin, unrestricted without the collar or whatever else was happening out there before it all came back to her. She makes a mental note to ask someone about that—later.

For now though, this is good.

This is really good.

She hums and burrows closer to Marcos, and he murmurs something in Spanish against her hair, but she doesn’t have the mental energy to translate it as she curls her legs in and shifts higher up on his lap. The hand that’s not in her hair slides around her waist, and she tenses a little when his fingertips sneak under the hem of her scrubs and touch her stomach where—their baby is?

How the hell is she supposed to bring up the beating she took—both beatings, really—when he’s so _happy_ to have her, and maybe them, back and most importantly _not_ en-route to a special mutant hell where they don’t even have the decency to call her Polaris. He’s so happy that he’s almost glowing with the force of it.

“Lorna?”

She takes a deep breath, and none of her ribs stab at her, so there’s a chance she might be okay. If she’s lucky. So, she shakes her head, tucks in against his neck so she can feel the rumble of his throat when he talks, “I’m good.” 

His hum rumbles like she wants and the hand in her hair slides down, his fingers tracing the bruise-like circles around her eyes—who needs an overpriced smoky-eye eyeshadow palette from Sephora when her genetics will do the work for her—and she sighs when he slips his warm fingers over her temple and runs gentle circles against her skin, probably trying to urge her to get some rest, which is—not going to happen until they get somewhere safer than the outskirts of metro Atlanta.

Either way, Lorna sighs and curls up even tighter. She wraps her fingers around Marcos’ arm, strokes over the bones of his wrist before she slides her fingertips over the broad back of the hand on her stomach. Her fingertips trace over the places where he glows when he uses his powers, and she runs her thumb over his knuckles a couple times the way he likes before she slots her fingers in the gaps between his and digs her fingertips into the fleshy parts of his palm. Marcos sweeps his thumb back and forth over her skin, and every inch of her tingles as she squeezes his hand harder.

“That’s really pretty.”

Lorna cracks an eye open and sees Probably-Mrs. Prosecutor staring at her from the middle-row seat behind John, and between them, filling the back of the car, the air shimmers in the hundreds of colors of the aurora, “We can wreck shit, but still be pretty about it,” she says, hisses at Marcos when he tugs at her ear. “You have a name, Mrs. Prosecutor?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Strucker watching her warily. When she glances back at the pale and shaky probably-a-medical-professional-considering-how-she’s-handling-that-leg—and they’re really going to need someone like her to stick around HQ, unless Strucker insists on hauling ass to Mexico—Lorna sees her shooting a look over her head at Marcos, which—

Interesting.

Very interesting.

“I’m Caitlin,” Mrs. Prosecutor says, her voice finally calming down from the squeaky shriek she spoke with when she drove up in get-away-vehicle-the-first.

“Sorry your husband’s such a buzzkill,” Marcos nudges her again, and she huffs against his neck, tilts her head and bites at his collarbone, which makes him jump and squeeze her side, and the auroras around them recede a bit as their shared adrenalin fades. She turns back to Mrs. Prosecutor, and quirks a corner of her mouth, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Prosecutor. I’m Lorna. Call me Polaris." 

Marcos clears his throat, sits up a little, but not enough to knock her from this very comfortable ball she’s curled up in, which she appreciates, because now that she’s coming down from the day’s events, it’s getting a little difficult to move, “Sorry about her, Caitlin.”

To her credit, Mrs. Prosecutor just snorts and goes back to wrapping a thick bandage around Strucker’s leg, because it wouldn’t do to try to stich him up when John’s trying to avoid the potholes marking the parts of the Atlanta infrastructure that state officials don’t bother to maintain, “I have teenagers, remember?”

Strucker coughs, “Where _are_ the Andy and Lauren?”

Mrs. Prosecutor’s hands stop moving and she looks down, and Lorna’s brows hike to her hairline, especially when it’s _Marcos_ who says, “They sabotaged the bus so we could have a chance to break you out,” before Lorna can needle him about how much that did _not_ happen, Marcos grunts in that way he does when he’s uncomfortable and says, “It didn’t really work out the way we planned.”

“Andy’s not _trained_ like you all are,” Mrs. Prosecutor says, like she very much does not _want_ him to be trained, and Lorna really wants to meet the kids whose powers apparently are strong enough to traumatize the shit out of their parents.

Good for them.

“He’ll get there,” John calls from up front, the first thing he’s side since they got moving again. “You said you were in this, and you know those kids of yours aren’t going to let you go at it alone.”

Mrs. Prosecutor’s mouth draws in like she does _not_ like that answer, and Lorna hums, “That what you really think about these kids, John?” 

“Yeah,” he says short and with an edge that means he’s mulling over something, something _bad_.

Lorna cranes her head up to look at Marcos in wordless askance, but he just shrugs back. 

He’s not hiding anything from her—she knows him well enough that she’s pretty sure she knows _how_ he knew where to find the transport’s route, and also that he knows she knows it. But that also means he doesn’t know what’s going on in John’s head right now either, and none of this can end well.

She tunes out the Strucker’s ensuing argument about Mrs. Prosecutor’s decisions to A, bring the kids into the so-called line of fire, and B, to send them back to headquarters on their own, sighs and closes her eyes.

“You feeling okay?” Marcos asks once the argument dies down and a relatively calm silence settles over the car as John drives from one identical back road to the next.

“Well, I could sleep for a week. In a bed.”

Not arguing with the Missus anymore—though win or lose, Lorna’s not sure she cares to determine—Strucker grunts, “Caitlin should take a look at you.” 

Lorna’s eyes snap open and she bristles, but doesn’t move, even as Marcos tightens his grip on her side, because his thrumming pulse is a hell of a lot nicer to listen to than Strucker’s guilt-driven prattling, “I’m fine.”

“I saw that guard kick you,” he shoots back, and Lorna winces as Marcos growls and holds her tighter.

“The baby, right?” Mrs. Prosecutor asks—Jesus, does _everyone_ know? Did Marcos take out an ad on Facebook while she was gone?—and she’s already shifting, looking around for the best way to climb over Strucker’s legs without aggravating his injury, but she stalls, probably at the look that Lorna knows is on her own face.

“I don’t know,” she hisses. “They don’t really give a rat’s ass about mutants who get their asses beat in _prison_ , even if they’re _pregnant mutants._ ”

“Lorna enough,” Marcos says, a soft rebuke as his mouth brushes against her hair. “She knows what we go through.”

Sure, the look on Mrs. Prosecutor’s face says that she does, but Lorna’s had it up to here this week with non-mutants who just don’t get that mutants just want to _live_ , even if someone of them can’t control their damn powers. And don’t get her started on the _guilt_.

Lorna sighs, looks Mrs. Prosecutor in the eye and tilts her head, “Fine,” she says, tacks on as an afterthought, “Thanks.”

It’s a minute before Mrs. Prosecutor can finagle her way into the back with them, and the auroras recede completely as Lorna sits up and untangles her hand from Marcos’, stretches her legs out so Mrs. Prosecutor can carefully roll her shirt up, but she doesn’t leave his lap, and the hand he had in her hair shifts down to curl around the back of her neck. 

Mrs. Prosecutor’s hands are small and cold as they gently probe around the boot-shaped redness on her left side, fortunately it’s high up, closer to her ribs, but she and Lorna both know that she’s not far enough along for them to _really_ know for sure by something as simple as touch. 

She had no clue she was even pregnant before Strucker walked into her cell and showed her that damn medical report. 

“I don’t think we’re going to know for sure,” Mrs. Prosecutor says after a minute. “Have you bled at all?”

“Only from my nose,” she glances over Mrs. Prosecutor’s shoulder at Strucker, can’t help but needle him. “Those collars are really something else.”

He doesn’t take the bait. 

Pity.

Her little speech to him was a highlight of her week.

Well, other than seeing Marcos again.

“I don’t think an at-home pregnancy test is going to give us any answers,” Mrs. Prosecutor finally says as she carefully tugs Lorna’s shirt back into place and sits back. “Unless we get you in to see a doctor, I’m not sure if we’re going to know for sure for a while.”

Not like Lorna wasn’t extremely aware of that.

“Fortunately, the female body is incredibly resilient, especially when it comes to pregnancies. I wouldn’t give up hope just yet,” Mrs. Prosecutor goes on, but with her head angled over Lorna’s shoulder at Marcos so—Lorna _really_ wants to know what that’s all about.

It’s not like she’s the first non-mutant friend of his, but she’s definitely one of the most interesting.

“Thanks Caitlin,” Marcos says, and Lorna shrugs and echoes the sentiment, because she might as well make nice, especially if she wants to see what the hell these Strucker kids have going for them.

Mrs. Prosecutor manages a small, shaky smile before she climbs back up front, settles on the floor in front of Strucker’s seat and rests her head against her hip. Lorna watches him cup a hand over the back of her head and yeah—the heartless may very well have a heart. Prison scrubs are a far cry from last week’s pressed suit, after all.

But he’s still a jackass.

Marcos tightened his fingers around her hip, cups her cheek and turns her to him, “Hey,” he says and brushes his nose against hers, and when green obscures her vision from an errant tangle of hair, he sweeps it away, draws his thumb up her jaw. 

“Hi,” her lips purse but curve into a smile as she drinks in his gaze, warm like the rest of him, and nudges her nose back into his. “Thanks for coming back for me.” 

He smiles—no, _beams_ at her, bless his bright little heart, “I wasn’t going home without you.”

Her heart warms, because she knows she’d do the same, if it was him in her place.

Lorna’s not sure which of them leans in first, or even when it matters when they’re close enough that her eyes cross, but his mouth is on hers, warm and soft and familiar, and his tongue swipes against her bottom lip before she pulls back, eyes wide as she remembers what got them into this mess into the first place, “Your arm,” she says, stroking her hand over the place he gripped when he fell that rainy night, light bleeding through his fingers.

He leans up and presses his mouth to her forehead, lingers against her skin, “I’m fine. Got stitched up by a real doctor even.”

Her brow ticks, “Dare I ask?”

“Later,” Marcos says and kisses her again, and that’s good enough for her. “I’m fine,” he murmurs against her mouth. “We’re fine. Estamos bien.” 

They are fine—as fine as they can be, all things considered—and Lorna shifts and wraps her arms around his neck, kisses him back until she breaks away with a yawn that she smothers into his neck.

“Get some rest, please,” Marcos says, rubs his hand up and down her back as she relents and settles against his chest. “We’re fine. Just rest.”

She kisses his neck once, and then again, “Maybe a little.” 

Lorna does doze because Marcos is both right and warm and it _has_ been a really long week.

At least, she dozes until Strucker’s yelp breaks the calm silence in the minivan, and then she cackles the rest of the way back to HQ as Marcos and Mrs. Prosecutor try to explain their base precautions to the paranoid mess that their guard is making him think he is.

**Author's Note:**

> Tentatively thinking that I might do an even-more-Lorna/Marcos-centric follow-up to this, but it's definitely not going to happen before 1x05 and will drive right into AU territory. But it's fine. AU's are my jam.
> 
> Prompt of the fic from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/writing-tips/writing-prompts/)
> 
> Number 129: “Right now, I don’t know if I want to kiss you or shove you off a bridge.” 
> 
> “Can I pick?”


End file.
